Meh, I'm posting on a public forum, I don't consider any of it private. Anyway, they're not going to do the Fediverse, I'm 100% positive at this point. There is no benefit to them anymore. Nobody wants them there, and their target user doesn't want the complications inherent to the system. I love Mastodon and Lemmy specifically for these reasons. Go there. Forget this nonsense. It's a beautiful place to be.
Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
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Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this article reads more like a critique of the way ActivityPub and Mastodon work. None of this is particular to Meta.
The odd thing is that even the biggest fedi promoters don't seem to get it. I thought "mastodon.social" was based in Germany, heart of GDPR country but there is no consent theater, no harassment by cookie popups, certainly no controls over data. I really don't mind, but there is some serious cognitive dissonance there.
Fedi promoters are traumatized from Mastodon explosion of late 2010s that forced them into picking either of revolustionist-terrorist or anime-loli or trans-furry factions to support, of which the last one is the only less-than-seriously-considering-self-harm choice for most. It still must be full pain and giant source for self contradiction.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#93This reminds me of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategies Microsoft used extensively with Linux and open source software in the 90s. From [1]: "a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found that was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences i…
As many others have said before, this isn't very likely to happen for many of the reasons it never happened with the web or Linux.
- ActivityPub is an open protocol. If Meta goes all-in on it, they'll be implementing a transparent spec everyone knows. Modifying that would send obvious shockwaves through the network and signal their non-cooperation. There isn't a covert way for them to really try this.
- Mastodon itself is AGPL licensed, meaning any Meta fork (for whatever reason) would be subject to "provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version."[0]
- Meta has no reason to. If they decide the app is sufficiently popular without ActivityPub integration, then things return to the status-quo for Mastodon. Meta loses what little control they had over the direction of the standard/protocol/applications and nothing really changes.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#94What's the point of joining a decentralized federated platform if you don't want other instances or people to see what you post? Meta scraping your name and doing other shenanigans is a different subject and obviously bad, but the rest is like complaining joining a public torrent tracker and being mad about leaking your ip address to its peers.
What's the point of joining a decentralized, open-source federated platform if you don't want Facebook to collect information about you and track you online, even though you aren't a Facebook user?
Why do you think they aren't doing that now? Meta could easily do it.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think for a lot of mastodon users it's more about being part of a specific ideologically aligned in-group than it is about anything else (this post touches on a lot of stuff that makes overtures to that). The irony to me is that any chance of relevance for a protocol is obviously going to need big players like meta to sign up (and that's a good thing for the protocol). A weird set of circumstances might have aligne…
Thread users are today's aol users. Better to keep them out of areas where real conversations happen
Then I fail to see the issue since "real conversations" aren't happening on the fediverse either.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#96What's the point of joining a decentralized federated platform if you don't want other instances or people to see what you post? Meta scraping your name and doing other shenanigans is a different subject and obviously bad, but the rest is like complaining joining a public torrent tracker and being mad about leaking your ip address to its peers.
What's the point of joining a decentralized, open-source federated platform if you don't want Facebook to collect information about you and track you online, even though you aren't a Facebook user?
So you want the information to be free! But not free to those guys over there. Ever so slightly hypocritical.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#97What an asinine concern. Don’t want your data on threads? Don’t use threads.
Did you even read the article? This is about data going to Threads from people who aren't on Threads.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#98tl;dr:
Things you post publicly are public.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are documenting their own personal lives without any protections. You can delete your account and the system will circulate a polite notification that other servers should delete that information. If you are a "sexworker" (sic) and you doxx yourself tough luck. If you reveal your mental illness through the things you write about and the language patterns you use tough luck. (Pro tip: machine learning algorithm…
What does any of what you just said have to do with GDPR requirements?
If this is right
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/7280#issuecommen...
#1 is "consent theater" which I am not noticing, maybe I missed it. Even if I give consent to one server am I really giving consent to any other server? Can any other server be bound to my agreement with the first server? #2 is a "polite request" and not a guaranteed property of the platform. #3 seems to be satisfied.
Re: Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
#100https://news.yahoo.com/teen-mom-plead-guilty-abortion-230802... >A Nebraska woman has pleaded guilty to helping her daughter have a medication abortion last year. The legal proceeding against her hinged on Facebook's decision to provide authorities with private messages between that mother and her 17-year-old daughter discussing the latter's plans to terminate her pregnancy. If you have information you don't want oth…
I mean yeah, but also, the actual fault is on the side of people who literally voted for this. And campaigned for this. And spend years trying to put the right people on supreme court so that this happens.